It doesn’t really matter if Bertolli, in their heart of hearts really believes in gay rights (if a corporaration can even be said to have beliefs) This isn’t about punishing or rewarding people for what they believe.

Barilla, like Chik-fil-a before them, has made themselves a proxy for their stated viewpoint, and allowed the public to vote on that viewpoint with our dollars. It’s about rewarding or punishing BEHAVIOR in the public sphere that changes the culture of the public sphere in positive ways.

It’s like this. If you’re hanging out with some friends, and one of them says something about how he hates black people, by remaining silent, you’re saying that’s an acceptable viewpoint to hold, to express, and to act on. We’re not constantly on the lookout for which of our friends is a secret racist, so that we can out them and shame them, but when they bring it up, if we value creating an environment where that kind of racism is less common, we make that value clear.

In this case, we, all the people who buy groceries, have the opportunity to speak up by voting with our grocery money, and, I’d say, the obligation to.

I buy Mueller’s just because I like the fact it’ll cook past the rubber stage. No matter how much I cooked Bertolli it is always chewy. (Yes, yes I know al dente…you know what, my pasta, my cooking level.)

At the very least that would mean that we have reached the stage where cynical, opportunistic pasta makers want to be seen as gay-friendly. That’s a good sign. People doing the right thing out of self-interest isn’t the worst thing that can happen.

The main pastas at my local supermarket are Barilla and Safeway’s house brands. Pretty easy to keep the two of them, uh, straight. (I’ve mainly seen Bertolli selling olive oil and maybe sauce; didn’t know they also sold the pasta.)

Bertolli is owned by Unilever. People amy want to look up all the fun things unilever has been caught doing before they jump on the gay pasta holding hands bandwagon. I;ll just post this little gem, let people do some exploring and find the other stuff on their own:

In March 2001, residents of Kodaikanal, a pretty hill retreat in Southern India, caught the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever red-handed when they uncovered a dumpsite with toxic mercury-laced waste from a thermometer factory run by Unilever’s Indian subsidiary Hindustan Lever. The 7.4 ton stockpile1 of crushed mercury-containing glass was found in torn sacks, spilling onto the ground in a busy scrap yard located near a school. Despite the visible evidence, Mr. Subramaniam, Hindustan Lever’s export marketing manager, dismissed charges of indiscriminate dumping. “No hazardous wastes have left the factory site,” he said.